On the topic of “canon”

Canon is important. The canon is what people care about when they’re talking about a work of fiction. I recently wrote about criticism of media and one media I often criticize is Star Wars. Specifically, I criticize the sequel trilogy featuring Rey Palpatine (or Skywalker, whatever floats your boat). Now it’s obvious that these movies are widely divisive. One of the most common criticisms (one that I personally abide by) is that it is incredibly destructive to the Star Wars canon. But the new movies are canon, right? So how can canon be destructive to itself? Some Star Wars fans have gone so far as to say that it’s so destructive to the Star Wars canon, you have to completely separate it from the canon that Lucas established. But this presents an interesting question to me. What conditions are necessary to establish “canon”? Let’s continue.

Canon

What is canon? What are we even talking about here? Normally I would go to Merriam-Webster but they’ve kinda thrown their credibility down the drain by literally ninja-updating definitions. So we’re going to use the Wikipedia and hope for the best. For what it’s worth, I find the definition to be somewhat incomplete but that’s OK, it should work for today’s post.

In fiction, canon is the material accepted as officially part of the story in the fictional universe of that story.

– Wikipedia

They do note this idea of splitting canon (particularly in the case of Star Wars) but that’s not what we’re here for today. Basically, there’s this idea of a fictional universe. The structures that make up that universe make up its canon. There’s nothing that states that newly introduced structures cannot contradict prior structures. The question is, how we deal with those. Typically, the justification is “the author forgot” (Why was every Uchiha in the past capable of using Izanagi despite it requiring the chakra of the Sage of Six Paths?). We refer to these as “retcons” and people don’t like them very much. If you think of the canon as the “rules”, people don’t like the introduction of “new rules” by surprise or the breaking of old rules without proper justification.

Why does canon matter?

It is my view that the reason works of media are hailed is because of the rules of their universe and how they consistently stay within those rules. Death Note is a perfect example of this. In Death Note, the rules were introduced to the reader incredibly early in the series. Every action that was taken, we knew how it should play out and it was up to the parties involved to make their reaction. The consequences had their conclusions made known to us. Kira demonstrates his ability to kill seemingly anyone. L has a Lind L. Taylor pose as L to see if Kira would kill him. Kira does. This demonstrates that given a name and a face, Kira can kill anyone. This occurred live, so Kanto saw Kira’s power firsthand. This proves Kira is real. L then challenges Kira to kill him. Kira cannot, for he knows neither L’s name nor face. On live television, L challenges Kira to do something that we know he can’t do but that L can only guess that he cannot do. L lives and the cat and mouse game begins.

While theatrical, I sometimes wonder if it would’ve been better to have Lind L. Taylor’s challenge pre-recorded, but now I’m wandering off into the weeds. The point is, we know the rules and the interesting thing with Death Note is seeing how the rules are utilized to create fascinating situations.

My view is that THIS is what people are looking for when they are talking about fictional canon. This is why canon is so important. If the audience doesn’t know the rules, they can’t engage with the media meaningfully and it just becomes pictures on a screen or words in a book. We cannot invest ourselves and put our brains to work in a meaningful way because we don’t know if the rules are always going to be the rules or if there are going to be new rules which open up some can of BS that throws everything out the window. Think about it like this: when the canon is inconsistent, for the viewer, it’s like trying to take a test on mathematics but receiving history questions in the second half of the test. You had no way of being prepared or even guessing the power so it’s not a fair test.

The Star Wars Canon Question

Star Wars has a series of canons since Star Wars is a very old series with a very long history and a very long series of questions. When most people talk about Star Wars canon, they’re specifically talking about the movies and in some cases The Clone Wars animation. While there was a bit of a hubbub when Disney said the EU (now “Star Wars Legends”) are not canon but I don’t think the average Star Wars fan was particularly involved in things like the Thrawn novels and whatnot. If you don’t want to consider them fans, whatever, that’s your choice.

So Disney takes their cake and eats it too and creates a few Star Wars films. Question now becomes, are these films canon? That brings us to the question I am interested in for this blog post.

Where does canon derive legitimacy?

I think this is an interesting question because it’s really where this whole mess stems from. If we could answer this question, we could neatly settle all of the other questions.

The answer should be obvious right? License. If it is licensed, it’s canon, right? Well, no. License is permission from the holder of an IP to produce derivative works. However there’s no requirement such that all derivative works must be consistent with all other derivative works. Or at least there need not be. Sometimes the IP holder accepts these derivative works as canon (Elite: Dangerous comes to mind) and sometimes they don’t. So license is not the best place to derive legitimacy. Otherwise we’re gonna have a real fun time opening the box known as Touhou.

What about the IP holder? From a market perspective, this one makes the most sense. If I own Jesus Bejesus and I sell Jesus Bejesus to Disney, I can no longer legally create and market Jesus Bejesus products without running into some legal issues. Especially if my stuff is more popular than Disney’s product. If I cannot legally create and sell media for an IP, do I have any control over the canon? If I control the IP, I control the market for that IP, and all changes would have to go through me.

What about the creator? So this also runs into that IP holder issue but there’s a separate issue of the creator dying and the IP entering public domain. Does the canon’s addition end with the death of its creator. Well yes, for that specific creator but what about others that may have been working with the creator? If I die but my assistant continues the story, gets their own assistant, dies, and that assistant keeps the torch burning, is all of our work canon?

I think this is why audiences split the canon up. It’s a nice way to solve all of these issues at once. If we just agree that we’re talking about these rules we don’t have to start rules lawyering your claims about Luke being strong enough to suppress black holes and whatnot.

And it’s for this reason that I tend to lean on the idea of the audience controlling what is canon with a mutual understanding that the one creating the stories, while in control of the story, is on watch. Audiences can accept or reject your canon as “true canon” and move on with or without you. After all, if no one is discussing your work, is it really canon? There’s an obvious problem with the audience getting to pick and choose because the audience isn’t one being. It’s a bunch of people with their own rules and biases. But it is my view that the strongest canons, the canons that will persist and be enjoyed and discussed and contributed to long after their creator’s death are the ones that are best constructed. A “Survival of the fittest” in a kind of way. In a way, this makes the Bible one of the strongest canons I know about. Are all religions simply really well-made and persistent canons? That’s a topic for another day!

Anyway, I guess that’s all I had for today’s post. Thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

Misconceptions in Media Criticisms

This is one I have to grapple with a lot. Now I’ve stopped doing video and movie reviews because I don’t have the time and I’ve been developing my art/Japanese skills. But I’m still fairly active on social media and I still voice my opinion on particular pieces of media that I’m familiar with. The obvious example is Star Wars. I get pretty hard pushback which eventually comes down to “That’s just like, your opinion man”. So let’s all take a breather and go through the common misconceptions of quality in media.

Money != Quality

I can’t believe we have to go through this but here we go. The amount of money spent and earned by a particular piece of media is not an indication of whether it is of high quality. I’m going to use games for this example but in general the principle applies.

The amount of money earned by a game is determined by the number of copies it sells. The amount of copies it sells is based on many things, but let’s just use advertising. Obviously reviews matter but you need to sell copies to get reviews (or at least you’re SUPPOSED to purchase and play the game before reviewing) so we’ll discount them for the example. Once you purchase the game, you typically don’t refund it if you’re dissatisfied (for most people it’s too much of a hassle or a used game cannot be refunded for full value, yadda yadda). So now that you’ve purchased the game you’re stuck with it like it or not. So assuming two games A and B of different qualities sell the same number of copies for the same price through the same distributor, they will earn the same amount of money despite being of different qualities. Q.E.D.

Consensus!= Quality

I get this one the most. If a lot of people like something then surely it’s good right? Now there is some basis for this kind of argument. If a lot of people enjoy The Godfather, a lot of people enjoy The Lord of the Rings, a lot of people enjoy Game of Thrones. If a lot of people like these things, then surely there’s something in there. Even if people don’t know what it is, you can understand that there’s something which provides this quality. Ironically, this is why reboots/remakes/references often fail. Because they tried to emulate that thing people liked but misunderstood what that thing was.

The simplest example could be Legend of Korra. Korra is Katara if they turned the aggression up to 11. Katara was always fairly gentle and motherly. It’s her main trait. This is why when she does go full BAMF, it’s so effective. Korra on the other hand is always going full BAMF. She doesn’t seem to understand what it is to be gentle and the writing for the show in general doesn’t attempt to create the gap. The beauty is in the gap and how it’s evoked.

Anyway, back on topic. You don’t need to know how to create fire or what fire is to understand that it’s warm and it can cook your food. So this argument that a lot of people liked or even the reverse argument, that because a lot of people dislike a piece of media that the media is good or bad. What it means is that some number of people believe that the media is good or bad. How did they reach this conclusion. The devil is in the details. We’ll talk more about that later.

Reviews as a metric

A lot of people like to use reviews on their favorite websites as a meter for whether a movie is good or bad. This has several problem. The first is obviously that review bombing is a thing and even if you and I highly suspect that a review is part of a review bomb, it’s not fair to attribute reviews to a review bomb. Lots of people give a movie 10/10 because it pleases their political vision and a lot of people give a movie 1/10 because it flies in the face of their political vision. There are obvious cases of course (“1 Star because your director supported China”) but there are not so obvious cases (“1 star because you censored the movie to please China”). The distinction comes from the fact that media should be evaluated with the only piece of consideration being the media itself.

Anyway, in my view, using reviews to gauge whether media is good or bad is not a good metric anyway because the only way you can use this metric is if someone else has consumed the media and applied their own personal metrics to the media. It is my view that (again) media should be evaluated on their own merits, not the merits that someone else has ascribed to them. I should be able to evaluate the quality of media after consuming it myself and requiring no other information.

Outside Material

We’re seeing a lot of stuff here from my Star Wars debates but this is important to talk about because it comes up with anime reviews and game reviews as well. That is, the idea of a particular canon being required to appreciate the media “properly”. To sum it up briefly, the idea that you need to consume media outside the media under consideration to give it a “proper” rating. “You have to read the light novel to appreciate the movie” is an example of this. “This was explained in the novel”. I believe this argument is fundamentally flawed because this media is not always accessible and it’s not like the media says “Please consume this other thing before consuming this media”. It’s sometimes implied, in the way of prequel/sequel relationships. But what do you do if there is no clear way of understanding what’s a prequel and what’s a sequel? Star Wars: A New Hope was originally released without a number. Today we know it as Episode IV but what if it’s found 1000000000 years from now by alien archaeologists and they decide to watch it only to find later that there’s a Star Wars Episode I. Now they’re confused. “This one has no number, this one has the number I. Which one should be viewed first?” Even worse, should a completely different media be required.

Ultimately, while media can be appreciated differently if one has related knowledge, it shouldn’t be a requirement to consume and it shouldn’t be a primary factor in evaluation. I did something like this in my Minoria review (and only now do I realize I never posted it here) in that I analyzed Minoria as a stand-alone work but I did make a comparison to related media.

How should we evaluate media?

We need to establish an objective metric. Now hold on, before you go raging on your keyboard let’s talk for a moment. When I say objective here, I’m referring to a series of standards applied to media. Yes, reviews are my opinion but they can be objective in that I’ve applied a series of criteria to the media and “stayed within the rules” while evaluating them. Certainly one should be careful to choose an appropriate metric when applying it to particular media. If the focus of a game is the action, I tend to be more generous when giving it the thumbs up/thumbs down if the story is of poor quality because it’s not the focus on the media.

So you need to establish a series of criteria. This is where everything goes downhill when discussing things online. It is simply the truth that different people use different criteria and different people apply their criteria with a different weight. So when you’re discussing things online with someone who disagrees with you, you’re not really trying to get them to agree with you because the same data point can be a plus in your criteria and a minus in theirs at the same time. No, your objective is to get them to change their criteria and understand why your criteria is a better one for evaluating media.

How do you do this? Honestly, I don’t know. I am still trying to figure it out myself. Because this is where we run into the next big issue:

Criticism != Personal Attacks

In my opinion, this is probably the biggest one. Something I need you to understand and to get everyone to understand is that criticism of something you like isn’t a personal attack on you. It is imperative that you understand this. It is perfectly acceptable to like media that is bad. This is kind of the point of “So bad it’s good”. The idea that a media is so awful that one can enjoy not only in spite of this poor quality but due to this poor quality is the point.

I have a confession. I love Pacific Rim. I’ve always loved giant robots and seeing them come to life on the screen was big for me. But the movie has several inconsistencies. Some things just don’t make sense. The Chinese triplets control a mech with 3 arms because there are 3 people inside but generally the mech moves a corresponding body part. Since none of the triplets have a third arm, how do they control the third arm? It’s not explained in the movie, it’s taken as fact and sure, that’s OK. But it’s a glaring flaw in the face of how all other mechs in the movie seem to operate. I’m going to enjoy the movie anyway, because cool giant robot punching cool giant monsters is still really fucking cool.

If someone says to me, “Pacific Rim is a bad movie and here’s why” I wouldn’t feel personally attacked. “Oh, I enjoyed something with inconsistent writing, I guess I’m a moron”. I might disagree if they said using a container as brass knuckles wasn’t really cool but being cool is one of those things everyone has a different taste for. In terms of criteria, it would fall under “spectacle” and typically I don’t say media is good on terms of “spectacle” alone. In fact I’ve often said that despite all of the spectacle a media can be fairly hollow, and that if you want something more than spectacle, find a different title.

We really need to understand some common ground here. If someone says something you like is bad and then lists reasons of why and your only response is “Well, I liked it” that’s not a refutation. Your objective (if you want to change their mind) has to be to either refute their argument or convince them to change their criteria. In my experience, this has proven to be fairly difficult.

I guess the short version is: You’re allowed to like whatever you want to like. You liking (or disliking) something doesn’t make it a good or bad piece of media. Anyway, I guess that’s all I had to say. Thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

I had been waiting for this one since I saw the preview before Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It looked like it was going to be amazing and they made the lead robot chick super adorbs and gave her an excellent lead voice. Well-known hint: You put anything remotely like fighting robots in your movie and I will watch it. Except transformers, those are trash. Screw you Michael Bay.

Let me preface the rest of this review by saying that I never read the manga Alita: Battle Angel is based on. I will, after I finish this review. I don’t want to soil this review with “Muh source material”. Oh. Spoiler warning I guess.

Alita: Battle Angel is about an android discovered in a scrap heap that gets reconstructed. Surprisingly, the android’s brain is “perfectly maintained” or something. Despite being in the middle of a scrap heap for what later discover could be as many as 300 years. This winds up being a niggling plot hole for me later.

When the android (Alita) is restored, the mechanic, professor, whatever you want to call him says she should eat (real food) to maintain her human brain. Well hold on doc. That brain is centuries old. Likely went an extended period of time without any nourishment. Her human brain should be dead by now. But whatever, we let it slide.

Here, the professor begins to play overprotective father. Normally I would dislike this but it’s worked in well enough that it’s not unbearable. There are only like 3 references to it and it’s sort-of left alone. And it’s understandable because Alita is reconstructed with the body he built for his own daughter. They could’ve worked this in a lot better than they did and really made the professor a good character. Instead he just sorta gets relegated to plot device.

Then there’s the romance which I’ll say right now – ruined this movie. It’s weird too because normally romance is sprinkled throughout culminating before the final scene but in this case they like sprinkle it in at the start and then WHOOPS dropped the whole $#@!ing can in right at the end. It winds up easily destroying a third to a half of the movie for me. It doesn’t make sense and as good as Rosa Salazar is at delivering most of her other lines, she’s horrible at delivering the romantic lines. That might be part of what killed it for me too. She sounds insincere. Like she learned how to deliver these lines from a children’s cartoon or something.

Alright, where does the movie shine. Luckily enough, the action scenes here feel really good. We’re talking B quality work here, occasionally A quality. They blew their load on the midfight though, and then things just went downhill from there. Like, any time Alita was battle angeling, I was all in. Give me more. The environment is cool enough to make me want to read the source material which I probably will after I’m done here.

Unfortunately, that’s probably the best praise I can offer for the movie because the rest of it is rather lame. The actual villain in the movie? Just a puppet. They end the movie with sequel bait. Disgusting. You give me 50% of a movie with at most 50% of that movie being decent? Just cut out the romance and take us to the real boss.

If the movie ended halfway through I’d give it a solid 4 out of 5. Really, the movie is only good when Alita is beating the $#@! out of something. There’s a scene where she practically plays the black knight from Monty Python… but wins. Honestly, best scene of the movie right there. The sportsball scene that came right afterward was meh. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I really wanted her boyfriend to sell her out. Glad the chump died.

And this is a minor complaint but they had a golden opportunity to do ‘[X] hits jukebox to start the music for a barfight’ scene and threw it away. Just threw it away. Come on, we all wanted it. You show me someone who says they didn’t and I’ll show you a goddamn liar.

So, the short version: The movie is excellent when it’s being what its source material probably is: action. Cyberpunk fighting robots. More please. The movie is terrible when it’s trying to be something it probably isn’t. It’s not a romance film. They don’t utilize plot threads properly. So many scenes would go purely to waste if the scenery itself didn’t salvage it. Ending on sequel bait is cruel, especially when you don’t place a peak right before it. I do not recommend this movie. Thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

[Article Response] “Damaging a Franchise”

This article was pretty short so I figured I could do a quick response to it. This means that my response will only be about 3-4 times as long as the article in question rather than 20 times.

Alright, so what’s going on here? Well, it’s exactly on the tin. “[James Mangold] warns fans that backlash will to films by hacks”.

At the point when work writing & directing big franchises has become the emotionally loaded equivalent of writing a new chapter of The Bible (w/ the probable danger of being stoned & called a blasphemer), then a lot of bolder minds r gonna leave these films 2 hacks & corp boards

In my opinion, his claim isn’t unreasonable. He claims that when producers fear backlash, they will take the safe route when it comes to making films and films will be produced by committee. I don’t know whether this is true or not, but it’s not an argument that I find difficult to accept at face value.

So what’s the problem? Well, there’s one big problem

Respecting the Franchise

I think it’s important that when new writers and directors take on a film, they need to show a great deal of respect to the franchise that they are picking up. They need to recognize that fans love the established universe as it is and work with that. Yes, you are writing a new chapter of the Bible. You don’t get to claim the glory of writing Chapter VIII while flagrantly abusing Chapters I-VI.

Outside Example: Doctor Who

Doctor Who is a show about a humanoid species called “Time Lords”. Time Lords are a unique species in that they possess the ability to “regenerate” when they sustain heavy injury, affording them a new body, new personality, new everything, while retaining the experience they’ve accrued in their past lives. This power is not infinite, it can only be used twelve times. When it came to be nearing the end of the Eleventh Doctor’s run, the producers of the show were faced with a problem: the twelve regenerations (as stated in already established canon) were up. What do we do? Do we create an ending to the Doctor? Or do we cheat, and try to find a way to keep the series going now that it’s relatively popular?

The directors chose to cheat, and ass-pulled some kind of time-energy regeneration. Don’t get me wrong, I loved that Christmas special in which Eleven ends his tenure as Doctor, but it is an ass-pull and it is a disrespect to the show. And after that episode, we see the ratings drop Could the ratings drop be due to something else? Certainly. But it certainly seems suspicious that the ratings drop by 30% over the years since Eleven. Could it be the writing? Moffat, a highly-renowned writer, was a writer for the series after Eleven. He seemed to have been doing an excellent job until then. Why did the ratings go downhill after Eleven? Could it be the Doctor? Peter Capaldi has an impressive discography, extending over 40 years. To say that he is not an accomplished actor would be a bold statement to make. Perhaps Doctor Who was just a passing fad that has lived its 15 minutes in the limelight.

I recognize that we all want to see our favourite characters do the thing, but all stories must come to an end, and by disregarding previously established canon, it is my belief that the writers disrespected the series and in turn disrespected their audience as well.

Star Wars

When it came to the writing of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we arrive at a story which seemed to have the intent to “Let it die, kill it if you have to”. Let [Star Wars] die, kill [Star Wars] if you have to. This was not a Star Wars movie for people that liked Star Wars. This was a Star Wars movie to disrespect people who like Star Wars while attempting to sucker in a new generation. Which may be why Solo did not sell. People simply do not trust the studio to produce Star Wars in a respectful manner anymore. Star Wars Episode IX isn’t out yet, and we may need to see how Boba Fett plays out, but at this current moment, I will not be surprised if Episode IX does not sell.

The Point

I recognize the point in that you want movies to push boundaries but there is a way to do it without taking a dump on the source material. Of course failing that, there’s no reason that an established franchise has to have a movie that pushes the boundary. Marvel has been pushing out the same movie for at least 5 years, probably more, and all of the Marvel movies I’ve seen are legitimately enjoyable movies.

The decision to toss out tons of canon is incredibly baffling to me when the new canon to be written seems to want little to nothing to do with the existing material. It might’ve been forgivable if the writing actually made sense. But it didn’t. The world of Episodes I-VI felt so much bigger compared to this. Most of this episode takes place during the slowest car chase ever in the vast emptiness of space. The Force Awakens was so much better than this. It’s almost like you don’t even like Star Wars. You just wanted to slap your name on it. If that’s the case, don’t be surprised when in your act of greed that you failed to maintain the old guard while simultaneously being unable to entice a new order.

Conclusion

So I guess in summary, it’s not the fans that are damaging the franchise, it’s the producers.

The short version is that I don’t particularly like this criticism. Fundamentally, I think it misses the mark. Excepting that which I’ve stated above, Mangold’s statement could pessimistically be taken as “Don’t criticise movies or you’ll get bland movies”. I think the question you need to ask yourself is whether or not the fan backlash is justified. Again, I believe in this case, it is, or at least a significant audience believes that it is, considering the market failure of Solo. The people have voted with their eyeballs and their dollar. Whether or not Star Wars will recover from this, I don’t know. I don’t plan to speculate. But I would hope that the writers for the next movie are watching the internet, acknowledging concerns, and making necessary adjustments. If not, we may see the death of Star Wars, rather than the end of Star Wars. Which, in my opinion, would be pretty sad. That’s my take. Thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

Ghost in the Shell (2017)

I wanted to love this movie. I did, truly. I guess you already know how the rest of this review goes but do try to stay with me here, I’m not just a crying fanboy. While I drafted this with minimal spoilers, there still are spoilers ahead so consider this your spoiler warning.

So Ghost in the Shell is a manga from the late eighties, a movie from the mid-nineties, and an anime from the early 2000’s. This franchise has been through a lot, and I’ve been a fan of it for a very long time. The 1995 movie, while slow-paced, is an excellent work of art that conveys the messages that it wants to convey quite clearly. The Major, Batou, and Aramaki are some of my favourite characters from manga. The Major has this playful nature, Batou… is the butt(ou) of several jokes, and Aramaki is a sly fox that you can’t help but admire. Togusa representing the stubborn, older generation. Most of the other members had augmentations that made their job easier (Saitou’s vision, for example). Others augment themselves for fun (Borma’s liver augmentation). I guess the point that I’m trying to get across is that Ghost in the Shell represented a crossroads in our future where all of these types of people coexisted. We weren’t all cyborgs and we aren’t all humans. And the characters are all so relatable, it’s hard for me to pick ones that I don’t like. Even in the older movie, it was incredibly difficult for me to dislike the Puppetmaster, rather I disliked some of his actions (the poor man with false memories).

Maybe this one was a little close to home, and I shouldn’t have gone in because of that. Let’s talk about what I liked about the movie first.

The movie is visually appealing. I can almost see the future with holographic advertisements the size of skyscrapers already. While I see the payphones on the side of the street disappearing (sorry 1995) I can see the idea of more robots in the service industry. Hell, Japan, in preparation for the 2020 Summer Olympics is already constructing hotels run by robots dinosaurs. ROBOT DINOSAURS! Come on man! ROBOT FRICKIN DINOSAURS! There are some great special effects, however I believe the movie failed to capitalize on the 3D. Especially the scenes where The Major is getting painted back to normal, mesmerized me every time.

The acting is fantastic. ScarJo knows how to play her character (most of the time) and there were some great scenes where you could really see how her movements felt robotic, like it wasn’t a natural human body. In the source material The Major is a little more playful, which is what I liked about it, but eh, new adaptation, different direction. I’m not terribly bothered because what ScarJo did do, she did well.

Before I move on, I do want to take a moment to address the whitewashing controversy. Anyone that complains about it doesn’t understand the source material. The Major’s origins are notoriously mysterious (within source material, which this movie dodged for the most part). And I think that anyone that complains about the whitewashing doesn’t quite get the point. See, the major is effectively a human inside a machine and (I believe) the point that Shirow was trying to make with the character of The Major was that none of the external features really matter (and this is very effectively demonstrated in the 1995 movie). Quite simply, there’s nothing in the source material (that I recall) that makes The Major “Motoko”. In fact, there’s nothing that really makes The Major female. Sure, the exoskeleton appears female, but it could have easily been male. The Major itself could easily be ‘male’ (if we’re going by original personality) but again, that doesn’t matter. That’s the point of The Major.

I don’t know where they found Batou (Pilou Asbaek) but he was perfect. I don’t think they could have picked a better Batou. Christ I loved his Batou. He just seemed so buff! Kuze (Michael Pitt) exaggerated the little robotic flairs of The Major. I’m not sure how much of that was CG, but the line delivery was spot on. He really played himself off as the villain we could all sympathize with even if corporates didn’t turn into assholes.

There are some notable exceptions to the excellent acting. Togusa’s character (Chin Han) had like two lines the entire movie and they were delivered in such a way that I felt like it detracted from how naive the Togusa of old seemed to be. But this isn’t just nostalgia bait, he gave the line so quickly and so flatly “I am a human, and I will always be 100% human” that I felt like the line was wasted. I also don’t like exposition that way, especially when that line served no purpose for the entire movie.

I do wonder why Aramaki spoke Japanese for the entire movie. He clearly understood English, as everyone else spoke in English and the others clearly understood Japanese (maybe they had a translator in their ear or something). But with what little screen-time he had, he did exude badass. And while we’re on the topic of Japanese, why was Hanka always pronounced as hay-n-ka? Should’ve been pronounced Ha-n-ka and every time they pronounced it incorrectly I would cringe. Sounds weird when you read and hear Japanese most of the time.

Okay, let’s talk about what I didn’t like. Everything else.

I don’t think this is really “Ghost in the Shell”. The original Ghost in the Shell discussed several existential themes regarding humanity and what it means as we merge man and machine. It also addressed how these things would impact our day-to-day lives, and how these things could be abused by corporations and governments. It’s not like the source material lacked things to really discuss. And I don’t feel like I got much of that out of this movie. I feel like it was sorta just mentioned, and then we moved on so we could get to the action scenes. The action scenes weren’t terrible, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not really what I paid for. Other scenes didn’t seem to connect too well if you ask me. I feel like we may have been shown a series of loosely connected stories, which is kind of what the manga did… but I don’t think that a movie should be doing that sort of thing.

The language (Ghost, Shell) seemed very forced every time they were used, to the point where I feel like it would’ve been more natural to use ‘soul’ instead of ‘ghost’ every time they mentioned it. But this is due to line delivery, in the source material ghost is used so matter-of-factly that it doesn’t really leave an impact. But the doctor says “But the important part of you, your humanity, your ghost, is still there” is practically romantic so the language doesn’t seem to fit the line.

They ripped a scene straight out of I, Robot (a beloved favourite of mine), and I, Robot did it better.

My biggest complaint might be the Motoko subplot. It gets introduced about twenty minutes before the end of the movie and is resolved like five minutes after it’s introduced. And quite honestly, I don’t mind its inclusion at all. I have several problems about how it was included. First – why is the effective introduction of the subplot at the END of the movie, rather than towards the beginning? I feel like it would’ve been more effective had it been placed much earlier, perhaps right before the bar scene. And the extra irony about that scene is despite everyone complaining that ScarJo isn’t Japanese, the way they characterized Motoko’s mother looked distinctly Chinese. Just saiyan. The second thing is how very little we have to go on. There’s a glitch that The Major continues to see and it’s really the only thing she has to go on and The Major sort of just accepts that she’s Motoko but I personally don’t feel that the audience has enough information to come to that conclusion. The pieces of evidence she has are the memories of the burning building, watching her allies get kidnapped, and the name she was told by the Chinese lady. Sure, it’s “confirmed” by Kuze but I don’t think he should’ve had the information to make that conclusion either.

Long story short, I believe the movie failed to deliver on its source material, and just became another Hollywood action movie. Which I find depressing because of my attachment to the source material, but that’s fine. I would not recommend this movie. The pacing seems poor and the scenes incoherent. While there is some beautiful imagery, I don’t think that there’s enough of a movie here, let alone Ghost in the Shell. Thanks for reading

Artemis Hunt

Most Positive Reviews are Useless

This title is likely ironic coming from me, a critic that has reviewed several games both positively and negatively. The point of this post is to emphasize what makes a review useful and why most reviews, particularly the positive ones, are useless. This is another meta post that I’m making to elaborate on how I do reviews in response to feedback on Steam.

So the first question we need to ask ourselves is what is a review? A review is an evaluation of a particular work of art. Since the evaluation is done by an individual, these are often likened to opinion pieces, however there is a key difference. While each individual may disagree on how the art utilizes certain features, most critics should be able to agree to some degree or another what makes a particular quality good. For example, I think you’ll find nary a critic that says Microsoft Excel menu navigation is good, so if a game has Microsoft Excel menu navigation, expect that to come up in the review as a source of annoyance.

Reviews serve two major purposes. First, they are tools for communities to tell other members what to expect when they purchase a product. If I review a product and tell my friend that it’s good except for this one thing and my friend thinks that one thing will make the game unenjoyable for them, then they may not want to buy it. It allows me to save my friend some time and money. This is why the developers get into so much trouble when they start deleting reviews. They are violating the trust of the community. Secondly, they are tools for developers to learn how to make better games. One need not be a good developer to write a good review, but one absolutely must be a good critic to be a good developer. Being able to understand the failings of games is crucial to avoiding the usual pitfalls that make a game unplayable. Being able to understand why good games are good is essential to crafting one’s own good game.

What you should find (at least across my reviews) is that I talk about the components of a game and how I received them. Story, character, interface, map, combat, and anything else I can think of should all be mentioned in every single one of my reviews. Especially the more recent ones, as each review is “practice” and ideally I should improve as I write each review. While you’ll definitely find my opinions within the review (as I do write these to entertain and inform), my opinion is usually backed up by some kind of evidence. And this is why most positive reviews are useless.

Most positive reviews that I see on Steam are “Good game, enjoyed the story, nice work” or something to that effect. This is useless for purpose one, as no one knows why you enjoyed the story (and it is possible to express why without spoiling) and it’s useless to the developer because they don’t know what exactly it is that you liked. Maybe the author is trying to keep it short because people on the internet have the attention span of a goldfish, but you’re doing it wrong. Learning to write shorter reviews that cover the key components is difficult (and it’s something I’m practicing), but you still need to evaluate the game on its merits. Negative reviews don’t often have the same problem, as most people that review a game negatively complain about why they didn’t like the game. In these complaints, a negative review always offers advice on how to improve and also serve to help other buyers make an informed decision on whether they want to buy the game or not.

Positive reviews are also sometimes coloured by how much the user enjoyed the game. One of my recent reviews (at the time of writing) for Kingdom: New Lands likely falls under this category (but I did complain about stuff in it so eh?). This leads to the author sometimes overrating the game, instead of evaluating the game based on its merits.

When I buy games on Steam, I very rarely look at positive reviews. If I’m on the fence, I go straight down to the negative reviews and see what’s wrong with the game. I will still look at some positive reviews, but only the longer ones as these usually tell you the flaws within the game. I guess at the end of the day, what I’m saying is that short reviews with little to no explanation are useless, and positive reviews often fall into this category. When writing (or reading) a review, these short reviews should be avoided because they won’t help a buyer make a decision and they won’t help a developer on their next game.

Anyway, that’s my stitch. Thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

How to Rate on a Scale of 1 to 10

Alright, I’ve been getting some criticism for my reviews, some people pointing out that other people say it’s good, so it’s good. While I don’t wish to negate the input of these other players (that rarely tell you ‘what’ exactly is good) I do want to point out that there’s a good chance that they’re reviewing your game incorrectly. So let’s talk about the 1-10 scale.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scale utilized as poorly as 1-10. The reviewer is offered 10 options to choose from, which may be a bit cumbersome. So cumbersome in fact, that I think people completely disregard some of the scale to make it less cumbersome. If you happen to be a human reading this above the age of… let’s say 15 years-old, I want you to think of all of the people that you’ve rated based on attractiveness. More specifically, the ones you rated on a scale of 1-10. Ladies, you play along too, I know you rate guys. Now I want you to think of the distribution of those ratings. You probably have a lot of 7’s, 8’s, maybe a few 6’s and 3’s, with very few 1’s and 10’s. Those of you familiar with the Bell Curve will no doubt see the problem here, but I’ll explain it for those that don’t.

This is the general shape of the Bell Curve. This one in particular is a normalized distribution, so it’s designed to show probabilities of an event occurring. And what we see here is that the greatest number of events should be rated 6. This is because 6 is the average between 1 and 10 (Actually 5.5 is but we’re rating using whole numbers so round up or round down. I choose to follow convention and round up). As the ratings deviate from the mean, we should see fewer and fewer uses of these ratings. So there should be more 3’s than 1’s and more 8’s than 10’s. If you’ve rated 100 people based on appearance, you should have very few 10’s. But I’m willing to bet that you have more than the appropriate number of 10’s and not enough 5’s or 6’s. Why is that? Let’s continue

The normal person will likely have a lot of 7’s in their rating database. I believe that when one asks themselves how attractive someone is on a scale of 1-10, they’ve unconsciously set 7 to be the mean. Movie was average? It’s a 6 or a 7. Since this close to the deviation from the mean, it actually produces okay results in ratings. However when it comes to terrible movies, it seems no one knows what to do. Is it a 3? Is it a 4? You’ll likely find that there are more 3’s and 4’s than there are 5’s, despite 5 being closer to the mean. And probably more 8’s than the two combined despite being aligned with 4 on the distribution.

Are you just seeing more terrible movies than slightly worse than average movies? Are you seeing more great movies than more terrible movies combined? That’s a distinct possibility. After all, who willingly watches a movie that they expect to be terrible? Who willingly plays a game that they expect to be terrible? But in that case, we should see a slightly shifted curve, rather than, well, a non-Bell Curve. If you look at seasonal anime ratings on MyAnimeList, you will see many 7’s and not nearly enough 5’s or 6’s. This is evidence of a shifted mean.

I’m not judging anyone for this behavior. I used to engage in this myself, particularly regarding anime and manga. But once I sat down and asked myself why I rated SAO a 6 and several of the Monogatari series in a similar range (5-7) I realized the problem. I thought back to the humans that I had rated based on appearance and saw a similar trend.

Bringing this back to what the problems with ratings, people seem to exclusively use a 3-10 scale instead of a 1-10 scale. The removal of 2 ratings might not seem significant but you’re talking about 20% of your rating scale not being used much at all. And then we need to remember that the lower ratings 3-5 are not used much at all. So you’ve pretty much turned the rating system into 6-10 with an average around 7, which actually lines up with general public nicely. If we turn it into a 1-4 system and equate 7 with 2, then 50% becomes the mean and that’s about what we want.

So I guess it’s not that you’re not producing a Bell Curve properly, it’s that you’re producing it for the wrong range of numbers. If you want to use a 1-10 scale, you need to USE the full scale. You can’t toss out 9’s and 10’s like candy because you felt something was phenomenal. You need to think about all of the games you’ve played up until now and see if it’s not really an 8. And don’t forget about the lower numbers. Don’t just hate a game or a movie and say, “Yep, that’s a 3”. Think about what you didn’t like and compare it against all of the others you’ve seen before.

At the end of the day, the method is up to you, but by adhering a bit more strongly to a 1-10 scale, you can make your ratings on the 1-10 scale be a bit more meaningful. I want to encourage you to really use the 1-10 scale and not the 6-10 scale. Anyway, thanks for reading.

Artemis Hunt

Frozen – I Will Never ‘Let It Go’

Hold up there partner. The title could have a loving spin on it, but it’s actually more of a ‘love to hate’ sort of deal. Let me explain. Also, because I don’t do these things without giving a reference to the source material, here is Frozen’s IMDB.

What is Frozen? To briefly summarize the movie – there are two princesses. One has magical powers, the other does not (leading me to believe that one is adopted). Said magical powers must be hidden from the outside world for some reason or another so Elsa (magical power sister) is taught to always hold in her magic. Parents die because Disney movie, years pass until Elsa, the elder sister may be crowned Queen. Which leads one to question who was running the country for those ten odd years, but it doesn’t stop there folks. Coronation day comes, firebrand younger sister finds a guy she likes and asks her Queensister to marry him. Queensister says no, younger firebrand throws a fit, and Queensister accidentally reveals magic. She then does what any responsible monarch does and abdicates the throne. Young firebrand goes in search of elder sister, finds her, gets shot, and leaves. The country sends armed men to find the ‘Queen’ and capture her. Queen gets captured, an attempt on her life is thwarted by younger sister, everyone lives happily ever after. The end.

So before I get onto why I don’t like Frozen, maybe I should briefly mention why I do like Frozen. It has good music. Alright, moving right along…

So why don’t I like Frozen? Understand that when I watch a movie, what I’m looking for is generally good design. Characters and motivations have to make sense. The plot has to make sense. Disney movies usually have life lessons one could take away from it. Frozen, from a storytelling point of view does not make sense. Let’s examine the country of Arendelle, the fictional home of Elsa and Anna.

Where do the people of Arendelle like to eat? At the Olaf Garden.

We’re looking at a country that went without a ruler for some five to ten years. How has the country not devolved into chaos in that timeframe? Maybe the people are inherently good. Alright, let’s roll with that for now. But that shouldn’t stop the people of Arendelle from being conquered by external threats. In the final panning we see that Arendelle is an island nation with what appears to be only two land approaches. This makes Arendelle extremely vulnerable to sieges. By all rights, Arendelle should be under the control of external government. But alright, let’s say that doesn’t happen, Arendelle exists until coronation. At coronation, Arendelle literally throws the gates open to be conquered by literally anyone.

In the flood of people entering, we meet Hans. Hans is the youngest of children from some faraway country but he still wants power. So what’s his plan? Woo one of the princesses! Obviously. And it’s not hard for him to do in a country that’s full of good natured people that don’t try to seize power when the head of state recently died and their children are being cooped up in the castle for… safety? He settles on Anna. When Elsa runs away, Anna decides that she must bring Elsa back, and she says that she’s leaving Hans in charge. Ignoring the fact that the Queen should theoretically still have her rule, and not Anna, the people just accept this! Hans becomes the person in charge! And this is where his plan seems to get funky.

So Hans is now ruler, mission accomplished. The people trust him enough, they’re following his instructions. So what does he do? He sends armed men to find Elsa. Maybe they’re armed because wolves in the forest which, alright, I can buy that. Why does he send armed men? Well… it would make sense to endear him to the people to go look for Elsa. And if Elsa is left alive, she could come back and take Arendelle by rights and by force. So good job Hans, sending men to find Elsa, actually was the correct choice of action. Yet when they meet Elsa alone in her castle, they capture her and bring her home… for Hans to kill… later? Why did they not simply kill Elsa in her castle and be done with the matter? Anna isn’t there to be a witness. We know that they have no qualms about killing Elsa because the first quarrel gets fired straight at Elsa’s chest. We know it’s not about Elsa being required to undo the frost magic affecting the kingdom of Arendelle because Hans was about to kill her in the middle of a lake. We know that it wasn’t a planned ‘see Hans as the hero for unfreezing everything by killing Elsa’ thing because Hans does it in the middle of a blizzard in which people can hardly see anything. If the plan was to make it look like an accident, they could’ve killed her and said an icicle fell on her or something to kill her. In short – Hans made mistakes and his plan made no sense. If anything he should’ve killed Elsa in her castle, brought back the body with icicle wounds or wolf attack wounds and said her death was an accident. While one team brings back the body, another team should go find Anna and bring her back. Marry Anna, and then have her die from the wound Elsa gave her, or just die by ‘accident’. Hans gets the throne all to himself for whatever that’s worth.

Now let’s talk about the princesses. Elsa is a blonde with ice powers. Anna is a redhead without ice powers… or powers of any sort really. Wait a minute… blonde?

Okay… So here’s Elsa…

And here are her parents…

You’re telling me a redhead and a brunette produced a blonde child? And not like regular blonde but like… platinum blonde? Those are some pretty slim odds. All of a sudden I’m skeptical of Elsa and Anna being sisters… Eye colour works out, looks to be parents with blue eyes and green eyes. Both Elsa and Anna have blue eyes, so they have a 50% chance each… so a one in four chance of producing the children with those eye colours? That’s fair. But the hair colour thing… that throws a wrench into things.

Also, can we ask why Elsa has magical ice powers? At the beginning of the movie, we are told she was born with the powers, but neither parent is magical and Anna isn’t magical either. But fine, I guess we can just say that she’s a… ehhh… is there a less offensive term than ‘mudblood’ for magical people with non-magical parents?

But fine, let’s accept Elsa has magical powers. Despite the fact that the hair colour and magic combination alone means she hit the jackpot of astronomical odds but fine. She did it. I won’t go into this topic since it has been done to death but why is her set of powers so lucrative? She can make snow – okay. She can make clothes – uhhh? She can make LIFE – okay? She can curse people to slowly turn to ice building up to all at once – hmmmm…maybe.

Why is she being forced to hide her powers? Because she can’t control them? I feel like that’s a bigger to have her practice them. She’ll get better at using her powers and she won’t accidentally brain her sister anymore. And she wouldn’t accidentally freeze the country and put the ice cutting businesses out of work. Plus since she’s clearly capable of bringing snow to life, perhaps they didn’t want to put their army (if they even HAVE one) out of work? I mean, there’s a lot of good Elsa can do with her ice magic. Worse comes to worst, she could take up creating never melting ice-sculptures. Or even something completely unrelated to her magic, she’s a free woman to live as she pleases! Simply put, I’m suggesting that there’s absolutely no reason Elsa had to be locked up in her room for fear of hurting others with ice magic. There may be a reason that she had to hide her ice magic? But by the end of the movie we see that this is not true.

There’s really not much to say about Anna. Her role in the movie doesn’t seem to be significant. “But she found Elsa and saved her life at the end!” Well… yeah… I guess. But think about it – when it comes to character, how does Anna make sense? What is her character? When you think of Anna, what are her defining features? Her red hair? Her childlike innocence? My problem with Anna is that she really doesn’t exist outside the realm of plot device. Think about it. Anna gets hit with the ice blast prompting Elsa to become afraid of her own powers. Anna’s tantrum about marrying Hans is what reveals Elsa’s magic to the kingdom. Anna confronts Elsa to tell her about what’s going on and also gets shot to guilt trip Elsa into surrendering when Hans’ men arrive. Anna, of course, stops Hans’ strike on Elsa, saving her life. At best, Anna represents the Disney stories of the past. The knight willing to brave any storm for their princess. The adventurer that trusts anyone they happen to pass. The girl who believes in love at first sight. At worst, she’s just a tool to drive the story, and perhaps merchandising.

We also have a severely missed opportunity in Olaf. Olaf is great because he’s the link between the Elsa of today and the Elsa of yesterday! Olaf is Elsa’s desire to have what she and her sister had before. But the character itself, what could be a tragic reminder of the past turned into Sid from Ice Age. Is it the same actor? … [Google search research] … Not the same actor but the characters are a little toooo similar. I would’ve liked for Olaf to be more alive with character. But let’s be real here. His purpose is to be as silly and childlike as possible to sell toys of him. Despicable. Also, I refuse to accept that Olaf has no concept of basic phase changes.

What about Marshmallow? Do we ever discover what became of him? #SaveMarshmallow

You know, I have a funny feeling that the music was written first and the story hackneyed to give it an excuse to work. Except they didn’t do it quite well. ‘Let It Go’ may be fine… may be. The song is about empowerment which may be more useful leading into the final act. But it’s placed before the climax or at the very least at the climax. On top of that, the context of it really seems awkward. Elsa being the only one with ice magic could somehow be interpreted as the villain after that song. The Reindeer song and the Summer song are what I call merchandise songs. They exist purely to draw attention to specific characters and draw out the runtime of the movie. They add little to no value. ‘Will You Help Me Hide a Body’ I mean ‘Do You Want to Build a Snowman’ is to emphasize how the sisters grow apart. Why are there sisters? Because Anna is a plot device, I dunno. I feel like ‘Fixer Upper’ would’ve made more sense with Elsa. She’s the one that’s damaged from her childhood trauma and her history of repressed emotions. Yet Anna is the one who needs to be ‘fixed’ because Elsa shot her. Anna seemed perfectly healthy. I mean, as far as her character goes, she’s just a dumb child. Elsa is the one that needed to be fixed.

What lessons are we supposed to learn from this movie? It can’t be that you don’t marry the first thing that looks your way because we have Beauty and the Beast (Belle rejects Gaston) and Brave (Merida rejects… everyone). If we look outside Disney films, there are even more numerous examples. It can’t be that loving one’s family is a thing because Disney did it with… well, Beauty and the Beast where Belle agrees to take her father’s place. Mulan is a personal favorite of mine and yet another example (same type of example, actually). Let’s not forget The Little Mermaid in which Triton takes the place of Ariel in her contract with Ursula either. All of these movies much better movies on their story first narrative. Although to be fair, Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast had the story work done for Disney. I suppose Mulan did too but I’m willing to give Disney more credit for the story in its execution. I guess I’m having a hard time giving Frozen a point in which some other movie not only has done it, but done it better.

Anyway, I’m running out of steam for this post so I’ll end it here. Again, Frozen – perfectly fine movie in terms of entertainment value. But as a movie, as a storytelling device, it falls flat on its face. Again, love the music. It’s just inexcusable to call it a movie. May as well call it a soundtrack with light animation to entertain you. 2 out of 5 stars.

Artemis Hunt